The key for losing weight – PATIENCE

Today…well actually not just today, but for the last few days I am feeling a bit blue. No real reason for it. I guess those periods simply come and go. This heat that started two weeks ago doesn’t really help the cause. It is hot and humid. Actually too humid and sometimes I have to remind myself that I am not in Panama Canal anymore but in Panchevo, Serbia. It makes me lazy and I don’t feel like doing anything at all…and that influences my bad mood and how I feel about myself.

For a few days already I feel …hm, let’s say ugly,  and I am saying that just because I don’t have a better word to describe it. And by that I mean saggy, swollen, heavy, huge. I told you that most of the time I don’t suffer because of my body image. Well, there it is! Now I do.  This is the moment when I hate my body and all those adjectives I just have counted few minutes ago, don’t help at all.

Yesterday when I met my friend Sanja, she told me that I look good and that she sees the change, and honestly that did cheer me up for a moment…but that is exactly how long it lasted, a moment.

But don’t worry, I will be ok… I am capable to pull myself out of this gloomy hole I fell in.

When I stepped on this journey I knew it won’t be easy. I knew that there would be time when I would just want to give up. We didn’t get to giving up yet, and hopefully that won’t happen, but I hit a bad patch and need to deal with it.

You know what, it is hard to deal with things without chocolate and ice cream…hahahaha, I am just joking about this though. I don’t think that it would solve the problem anyway and plus chocolate doesn’t taste that good anymore – it is too sweet and I don’t enjoy it as much. Except when I am in PMS, then it sure taste delicious.

Losing weight is a long process. You have to change your habits, fight your cravings and above all discipline yourself. The picture of the girl carving her skinny body out of layers of fat speaks million words about it. It is long and tedious, endless process and if you stick around long enough you get to enjoy the results of your hard work. Scary part is that it is a game that doesn’t end. When you hit your goal weight, then the maintaining it, part of the game starts. That is why I don’t believe in diet plans, but complete change of lifestyle and habits.

I am on a good track with changing habits, I actually managed to create some new, good ones – like drinking my shake every morning, tracking my calories(although I have been a bit lazy on this one for the last two weeks), exercising, walking every day. But from time to time, when I am not paying attention, I see old habits creep back into my life. And then I am not happy with myself, but I put it aside and go forward. It is ok. We live, we make mistakes, we learn, we continue.

Cravings – I think this is an easy one for me. I don’t have cravings for sweets or certain foods. Maybe it was a bit more prominent in the beginning, but now it is all good. And since that was the deal I made with myself when I started this journey, if I crave something I have it. No matter if it is glass of wine or a piece of chocolate. I just try to control how much I take and that is all. Usually I regret the moment I take food I was craving, but not because of the guilt part, but because it doesn’t taste as I thought it would, or it doesn’t do a thing and I just don’t enjoy it. It is actually quite silly sometimes.

And when it comes to discipline – huh, need to practice that one a bit more.

Nobody tells you that what you actually need the most is the patience. You have to be patient and give your body time. If you think about it, you didn’t put weight in an overnight, it is a process that probably took years, so you cannot expect that fat will be gone in a minute. And it is hard, as there are times when no matter what you do, it all stops and those damn numbers on the scale don’t want to go down at all.

And this is probably one of the reasons why I feel down these few days. I am siting on the same number for over 10 days now. It goes up and down, but not below 115kg. And I am not even sure why I was checking it so often, like I wanted to annoy myself in purpose. I usually do it once in a week or every 10 days and then I choose days when I actually feel or see that there is a difference.

This is the second time I have hit plateau, the first one was after 11kgs down. For a while scale didn’t want to move from 122kg. It was super annoying, but then it did, and it was amazing. It just went three numbers down, just like that. But when I hit the block, I was worrying, even though I have read that it is normal and everybody experience it. The thing that helped my be ok with it was to make a list of the things I do and see if there is anything I shouldn’t be doing or I should be doing more. That is when I started counting calories and writing down everything I ate. That was also the time when I started exercising first two times a week and then 3 times a week. I also got my Fitbit bracelet so I can count my steps better and see how much activity I have during the day.

Maybe I should make a list again, and see what are the things I am doing, and what I should be doing (count my calories every day for example).

That is a task for tomorrow morning.

I will let you know what the list looks like, and also I will tell you why I started counting calories and how that actually can help in creating some better eating habits. But now I need to go to sleep, it is raining this evening and I can feel the fresh breeze coming through the window, so I will use the moment to try to fall asleep.

Stay well and see you soon.